Dhaka – Bangladesh has been contemplating a nation budget of Tk 468,000 crore in the next financial year, more than 67,000 crore bigger than that of the size of the current fiscal year.

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith came up with the information on Sunday after a meeting of the Budge Monitoring and resource committee at his office.

“We have projected a Taka 468,000 crore for the next fiscal,” said Muhith, who placed a budget of Tk 400,266 crore in parliament on June 2017 for the 2017-18 financial year that began on July 1. This was the highest allocation in national budget ever since Bangladesh came into being in 1971.

Budget for the next financial year would be the last one for the present government as the parliamentary election is scheduled before December next year.

“So I thought that we should start well tune on that budget right now (for the next financial year),” the minister said adding that there would be no new initiative in the next budget.

The government will give the highest priority in the education sector in the next budget with additional importance to the human resources development, Muhith said.

The minister said he was happy with the implementation of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) and the collection of revenue as performance in these areas is better than that of the previous years.

“The growth of revenue collection was 11 percent in the last financial year. This time the growth is expected to be well about 13 percent,” he added.

The number of income tax payers has increased to 3,200,000 despite the National Board of Revenue had fixed a target of 2,500,000 in the current fiscal.

Despite the crop loss because of back to back floods in the northern parts of Bangladesh, the minister hoped that the economic growth will exceed the projected 7.5 per cent in the current financial year.